Feasibility and trade-offs in the design of an airship for Martian exploration

The rapid growth of the field of airship technology over the last few years for Earth missions, in turns enabled by the development of electric motors employed in a distributed fashion as a means for both propulsion and control, is fueling the investigation of the adaptability of this type of flying platform for several tasks. Through the energy harvesting capability achieved with solar cells, the already inherently superior endurance of airships could be extended in principle to the order of months, thus producing a highly-effective platform especially for high-altitude, low-payload monitoring tasks. The spill-over of these analyses to other planetary scenarios featuring a significant atmospheric layer is straightforward - in principle. Several shortcomings affecting the design of airships on Earth have to be analyzed as well in the generally more requiring non-terrestrial environments, coping with additional specific scenario constraints. This research, grounded on a consolidated methodology previously introduced and employed for the sizing of diverse airships for Earth missions, discusses such additional constraints and the features of an airship design procedure needed to cope with them. Furthermore, a specifically emended design methodology is employed to analyze in a parameterized fashion the effect on the airship sizing of some key technology and mission design assumptions, yielding an assessment of the feasibility and critical points. This research is aimed to answering three pivotal questions about the operational feasibility of an airship for Martian exploration. Firstly, to what extent can established sizing frameworks for terrestrial high altitude airships be adapted to the Martian environment. Secondly, what are the primary technological constraints that dictate the overall feasibility of the concept. Finally, whether a solar-powered design optimized for a specific mission, in favorable yet realistic conditions, be achievable. When placed in the context of the available literature concerning Martian airships, this work provides a clear insight on the global feasibility of such a mission, highlighting the technological bottlenecks possibly preventing the practical realization of an LTA concept for Martian exploration.